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Through the years, Twitter has helped you discover and share breaking news, stunning photos, hilarious videos, inspirational quotes, interesting articles, and the ponderings of your favorite celebrities. But now Twitter can help you discover, share and music.
What Is Twitter Music
Twitter Music is a new service designed to help you discover music that’s hot, new and interesting to you. Twitter is harnessing the power of its platform to help you learn about new music and find out what others are listening to.
Twitter Music goes beyond music discovery. The service lets you listen to and share the music you discover right from the service.
How Twitter Music Works
You can access Twitter Music through the Twitter Music website on your computer or the free Twitter Music app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. The service is available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, with expansion to more countries and Android devices planned for the future.
Twitter #Music allows you to discover music in four different ways:
- #nowplaying — songs people you follow have recently tweeted with the #nowplaying hashtag;
- Popular — the 140 top trending songs on Twitter;
- Emerging — 140 hidden talents on Twitter to help you discover new artists;
- Suggested — songs you might like based upon artists you follow and songs shared by people you follow.
Songs are displayed in a grid and you play them using iTunes or Internet radio services Spotify or Rdio. If you have a Premium Spotify account or an account with Rdio, you can play the full songs by clicking on Play Full Full Tracks and logging into your account.
If you don’t have either a Spotify Premium or Rdio account, then Twitter #Music will play a 30 second sample of the song from iTunes. If you like the song, you can buy it from iTunes through a link in Twitter Music.
The service is intuitive and easy to use, both on the website and the app. The controls are minimal, pause or play, and a volume slider in the app. You can swipe on the app to move to the next or previous song or you can manually pick a song on the Twitter Music website, but there is no Shuffle or playlist option. You can turn Explicit songs on or off in Settings.
Sharing is Caring
As you’re listening to a song, you can tweet the song to your followers directly from the service. In the app, press the circle at the bottom of the screen to share your song in a tweet with the hashtag #nowplaying. On your computer, click on the write icon to compose and send your tweet.
Follow the Artist
When you find a song you like on Twitter Music, you can view the Twitter profile of the artist and follow them on Twitter directly from the service. You can also play a selection of music from that artist and see what other artists that artist is following.
The Latest and Greatest
You can stay ultra-current with music trends using this service.
Interestingly, when I checked the most Popular songs on the Twitter Music website they were not in the same order as on the Twitter Music app I checked a few seconds later.
Pebble Watch
Good news if you own the Pebble Watch. You can control the Twitter Music app from your Pebble watch.
Spotify/Rdio/iTunes
Your enjoyment of Twitter Music will probably heavily depend upon whether you have a Spotify Premium or a Rdio account. Both cost $9.95/month in the US and will give you unlimited ad-free streaming of music on your computer and mobile devices.
(See, The Wonder of Tech review of Spotify by Jens Berget: The 10 Real Reasons Why I Love Spotify)
If you don’t have either one of these accounts, you’re treated to a mere taste of these songs with 30-second samples from iTunes. Listening to the first 30 seconds of a song quickly becomes more annoying than entertaining, making you yearn to hear the entire songs. Perhaps that’s the idea?
Listening to a sample of a song you already own through iTunes instead of the full track can be frustrating. A welcome update to the service would allow you to sign in with iTunes and play entire tracks of songs you already own.
But all is not lost if you don’t have a Spotify Premium or Rdio account — you can get a free trial. Head to the Spotify website to get a 48-hour trial of Spotify Premium or to Rdio for a 14 day free trial account.
Even without an account at either of those services, Twitter Music still has value. You can see what music is trending, discover new artists, see what people you follow are listening to and easily follow your favorite artists. Listening to a sample of a new song on iTunes may give you an idea of whether you think it’s download-worthy.
Bottom Line
Check out Twitter #Music to help you discover, share and play music. If you really enjoy the service, you will be tempted to get a Spotify Premium or Rdio account. Even if you don’t have these accounts, you can still have fun with Twitter Music.
Are you excited about Twitter Music? Do you enjoy discovering new music? Do you have a Spotify Premium or Rdio account? Let us know in the Comments section below!
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HI Carolyn
Great info share!
I’ve read about the twitter music and this truly is a music to the ears. I think twitter fans are going to enjoy this. The ways of discovering music also appears to be great, I’d get the first hand info of the popular music on twitter and the budding artist as well.
Thanks for this share. Have a great week ahead.
Sapna
Hi Sapna, Yes, Twitter Music is a lot of fun. I definitely get carried away when I’m on the site, checking out my favorite artists and seeing which artists they follow. You can learn a lot about someone by seeing which artists they follow!
I also liked seeing which songs Twitter suggested for me. The range of styles, eras and artists was fascinating.
I hope you enjoy Twitter Music too, Sapna!
Hi Carolyn,
I’ve been reading about Twitter introducing music in it’s awesome list too, but was waiting for an article from you to know all the details as you write so well about things that we understand 🙂
I love music, though don’t generally go for trying out new kind of music unless someone really says it’s good and like my good old all time favorites, but with such options – it would be interesting to pick out and listen to the various options.
Sadly, the link isn’t working at our end, or perhaps Twitter Music might come after a while, as most of these new changes take time reaching up here 🙂
However, I look forward to hearing live music once in a while when one’s working, though would explore more of it once things pick up our end.
Thanks for sharing this with us. Have a great week ahead 🙂
Hi Harleena, Yes, Twitter Music is only available in the few countries listed above for now, but plans to expand the service are in the works.
Even if you just want to listen to your favorites, Twitter Music can help you connect with those artist by making it easy to follow them and see which artists they follow.
I hope Twitter Music is available for you soon!
Hi Carolyn , I wonder that I was not aware of this Twitter initiative. I really love music like many others who will be waiting for this thing to be available all across the world. Thank you for sharing this information.
Hi Kumar, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, this service is fantastic for music lovers. I hope Twitter Music expands throughout the world very rapidly!
Hi Carolyn
I got an email from Twitter a few days ago about Twitter Music and it looked really interesting and I was quite excited.
I hadn’t realised that you need a premium Spotify or a Rdio account though, so I’m a little disappointed now as I don’t really want to sign up to either :-(.
Hi Tim, You’re right, Twitter Music is very interesting. You should try it anyway, even without an account with Spotify or Rdio. Even though listening to the song samples through iTunes is downright annoying, Twitter Music is still useful for discovering music, connecting with artists and sharing.
Twitter Music is free so if you don’t like it, you can just stop using it, but I suspect you may find value in it even without Spotify or Rdio.
Hi Carolyn,
Its my first time reading about Twitter music and I’ve got to tell you, it excites me. Well, Twitter has made its move to improve and what better way to do it than adding a music option for its users/followers. The one which excites me the most is the option to share the music which you are currently listening. It will give my followers an idea of what songs I usually listen. Well, its nice app/extension that Twitter made. Thanks for sharing this post.
Hi Farrell, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! You’re right, this is an exciting service from Twitter, both for the music features, but also for the future of Twitter. Who knows what Twitter will bring us next? I’m looking forward to finding out. 🙂
Hi Carolyn,
It looks interesting. I am trying to think of ways to publicise my great nieces music. This won’t help, but i might give away a free track. It’s a shame they it doesn’t help up and coming artists more.I was around in the day when British bands were popular and they didn’t wait for someone like Simon Cowell it pick them! I was often asked to be a manager for up and coming bands and some did become famous!
Hi Mike, Twitter Music does have a section for Emerging to help new artists get discovered, but Twitter hasn’t revealed how you can get on that list.
The music business is so different these days. No more record stores for you to browse through to discover new artists. iTunes, Google Play, Amazon MP3 store all carry thousands of titles, but getting discovered it still difficult.
Many more acts get discovered without TV shows than with them. In the US, the people who aren’t chosen as winners often become more famous than those who are!
The service is available in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, with expansion to more countries and Android planned for the future….Is Android like a distant planet or something?
I finally got an iTunes account and actually have music in there, but lately I have been listening to talk or sports radio and having trouble picking out songs I want to buy. Maybe this will help if I can listen to a snippet (of course I’m not going to pay for Spotify….I’m all about free…:).
Good info, I’ll check it out.
Hi Bill, Lol, yes, some developers treat Android as if it were a far away planet. Good catch, I will edit accordingly. :-bd
Yes, this service is designed to help you pick out songs. You can check out what songs the people you follow have been sharing, look at popular and emerging, and check out suggested music. You’re bound to find some tunes that you like.
Yes, Twitter Music is free so you can spend all day on it and not pay a cent. I wish they worked with Sirius or Pandora because I have accounts at both of those Internet radio services and don’t want to pay for a third one.
I listen to a lot of podcasts and audio books when I’m in the car anyway. Like you, I haven’t been listening to music as much lately but maybe that will change with Twitter Music?
Hi Carolyn
What a great way to use Twitter. They must have so much data they can analyze to figure out what music people are listening to each day. Too bad the service is still not available in Denmark 🙁
Hi Thomas, Yes, you’re right, this is a brilliant way for Twitter to use the data it collects and perhaps monetize that information, though they have not revealed their financial arrangements for Twitter Music.
I hope that this service arrives on Denmark’s shores soon. Stay tuned to The Wonder of Tech for further information on the expansion of this fun service!
music is my weakness and i can listen to metallica all day long however i don’t use twitter too much but this feature looks amazing, will check this soon, thanks for writing such a detailed article on it and one more thing, this blog is AWESOME
Hi Prabhat, Thank you for your kind words. You might want to check out Twitter Music to follow @Metallica on Twitter and see what artists they follow, their tweets and see suggested songs. Enjoy!
Great News for music lovers, I do follow and search for the music of my own choice. Thanks for the sharing!
Hi James, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m so glad this article was helpful for you. Thanks for leaving a comment to let us know. 🙂
Twitter has done well with this one. I like the idea of discovering new music that’s trending on Twitter.
I’m heard some scoop going around about this but hadn’t read up on it yet. I know you’d be writing about this so I’d wait and get the news from you Carolyn.
Now this sounds pretty cool. Of course I use Twitter in a whole different way so I probably wouldn’t be contributing but it’s still neat to see what’s trending, what people like the most and just know. I really like that, it’s cool.
Great info on this Carolyn, thank you again.
~Adrienne
I’ve never tried music sharing over Twitter since I am more on business things when using this. I wanna try these some time.
Hi Jeremy, Yes, for those who see Twitter as a business tool, this is a great new way of looking at Twitter, for fun!
Hi Carolyn,
I have seen the news about Twitter music all over, but this is the first time I’m actually reading about it. It sounds like a very interesting service, and I would have loved to test it. But, it seems that it’s not available in Norway yet. I use Spotify to discover new music all the time.
Thank you so much for linking to my guest post 🙂
Great article.
Hi Jens, Thank you very much for your amazing job on the guest post about Spotify. That service has really taken off in the US, probably thanks mostly to your wonderful writing here. :-bd
I hope Twitter Music comes to Norway soon so you can use your Spotify account to enjoy your Twitter Music!
Hi Carolyn,
Never heard of Twitter Music before. This is something new. But guess I’m always behind. I’m still learning Twitter and beginning to just get the hang of it. I might try this sometime and see how it works! Thanks for telling us.
Angela
Hi Angela, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Even if you’re new to Twitter, you can still enjoy Twitter Music. In fact, using Twitter Music can help you become more comfortable with Twitter and help you discover artists to follow. I hope you enjoy Twitter Music, Angela!
Hi Carolyn, I first could know about Twitter music on this blog only and I have also posted an article on my blog. I believe that there was a lot of scope of adding music function-ability to front-line social media platform and Twitter has observed that while working out on this. We understand that everyone using social media likes some kind of music.
Hello Carolyne!
Thanks for the great tip! I love music and I love to discover new and unknown songs.
Hi Mirsta, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! Yes, Twitter Music will help you discover new music in a fun way. Enjoy!
It’s good to see this new service about music. Twitter music is looking something new. I will take a look of it.
Hi Prakash, I hope you enjoy Twitter Music!
After reading the article I think I know everything about music Twiter! 🙂
Hi Isabella, Welcome to The Wonder of Tech! I’m very glad you found this article to be helpful to you. Enjoy your Twitter Music!
Wow Carolyn, I’d never heard of the music feature until today. It’s quite exciting, and discovering new music is one of my favourite things. This certainly feeds that, however the music is a bit too slanted towards pop/mainstream genres, but you really are bombarded with thousands of choices to explore, so there is something for everyone.
Hi Marcus, You might like the Discover section of Twitter Music then to help you find new music that isn’t mainstream. Enjoy!